Voila!

January 7, 2011 at 9:07 pm (Finances, General Gobbledygook, Weightastic)

“I think I’ll write a blog entry tonight”, I said. “Time to get back on that horse.”

I think I need to pretend like this is my confession booth. Maybe thinking people are keeping track will make me be accountable. Or something.

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I’ve decided to be better this year. Not better at running or knitting or my job, just better in general. Better at taking care of my home, better at taking care of my money, better about taking care of myself and my family and my relationships. Maybe drink a little less wine and a little more water. And take my vitamins and do my filing.

And also appreciate my left arm, regardless of how disabled, scarred, and gradually weakening it is. Remember that parable, the one about the man with no feet? (“I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.” That one.) This week I found out the sister of my college roommate was in a car accident that crushed her left arm, and it was amputated above the elbow. I can’t even imagine how tough the road ahead is for her, and she has 3 kids (who are only 7, 3 and 1). Don’t get me wrong, I have great faith that she will make it through just fine because I know her family and I know her and she is one tough cookie. But maybe now I will whine a little less often about the arthritic twinging my wrist has been doing more often these days.

(Aw, who am I kidding? I’m still going to whine, because the whole plate in the arm/scar tissue tearing/arthritis shit hurts.)

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I stopped drinking Diet Coke on New Year’s Eve. Not because of any big desire to not drink artificial sweeteners or cut back on caffeine, but because I suddenly realized that I was tired of feeling all bloated all the time. Who knew that surgically altered stomachs that are tiny would feel gross if filled with carbonated artificially sweetened liquids?

Oh right, every bariatric professional in the world.

Also, I gained 20 pounds when I stopped working out with Sheila back in May, which puts me a good 40 pounds above where I’d like to be. On the good side I made it through the holidays without gaining anything, a small miracle considering that I A) baked roughly 700 cookies and B) spent the entire week between Christmas and New year’s cooking.

Anyway, I’ll be doing some dieting. And exercising. And discussing it here.

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2011 is also going to be when I get my shit back together financially because holy mother of the universe I let shit get out of control over the past couple years. I finally sat down and did my budget spreadsheet for the year like I used to (up until mid-2008 that spreadsheet directed my every move and it WORKED). So I have great hopes for us to stop being constantly goddamn broke and overspending and paying late fees and overdraft fees and GAH.

It’s going to be a tight year, and not just in my jeans. Yet another reason to blog! It’s free! And fun! Or something.

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Diets and finances. God, I’m such a boring ass adult. I obviously need to go out and do some carousing too so all my confessions here aren’t boring.

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Har de har har

September 21, 2010 at 7:54 pm (General Gobbledygook, Pets)

Sometimes life gets crazy, and I get crazy with it. Other times life gets crazy and I stay sane. The past few months have been a good example of the latter. Last month, Kevin’s car basically blew up. (Kevin’s car is my old Honda Civic; driving it is his reward for being silly enough to buy a Ford Taurus back in the day.) It blew up right after we both went on vacation and had no money because we are trying to Get Our Shit Together on the money so we were like…paying bills and shit. ANYWAY. $1800 later it was fixed (blown head gaskets are not cheap, just an FYI) and we thought we were in the clear so I went about my business going to class and going to work and trying to find the humor in people who are definitely KRAZEE and not HEELARIOUS.

Then one Thursday night, I’m in class, and I am sick as can be with a very nasty cold and I get a text message from Kevin. The cats got into the pantry and broke a vase. Awesome! Vivi had a boo boo on her foot from the broken glass, but it looked like she had taken care of it. Even more awesome! So I stick to class for as long as I can, then bail early enough to get home by 9, take some Nyquil and crash the fuck out.

Except I get home and That Damn Cat (she who cost us close to $2000 her first year of life) (and is only 2 1/2 years old as of this writing) is bleeding. Profusely. Apparently she had managed to lick the wound shut and then she decided to start wandering around and started bleeding all over the damn place (that reminds me, I should clean up those bloodstains this weekend). So we wrapped her in a towel and headed out to the emergency vet. At 9pm, while I am sick and also, needing to pee. Because things always happen when I need to pee.

Anyway, thank gawd we live in the country now because the emergency vet charges the same as the regular vet rather than those crazy fucking outrageous prices that most emergency vets charge. So instead of $750 for the surgical repair of Dumbass Vivi’s 3/4 inch laceration with tendon damage we only had to pay $575. Le sigh.

Anyway, she’s spent the last 12 days walking around with a jaunty pink bandage on her leg, a bandage that she keeps trying to shake off (prompting Kevin to declare that Vivi has stanky leg). She is all better now, according to her; the vet’s admonitions to keep her from jumping have been met with laughter on our parts because seriously, we turn my back for two seconds and voila, she is on top of the 6 foot tall cat tree.

My opinion can be summed up thusly: what the fuck ever. So we end up with a cat with a limp. Not surprising.

We are contemplating renaming her Caviar, except I think at this point she costs more per ounce than caviar.

In other news Kevin is now officially in the contestant pool for Jeopardy. Perhaps he will get called up to whomp ass and make lots of money for us. I hope so, because we have a few more vases for Vivi to break.

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Things of Note

July 7, 2010 at 7:28 pm (Absurdity, Friends, General Gobbledygook)
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I bought a new trash can, and it made me much happier than I even thought I would be because of a trash can. Really, if anything screams “BORING MIDDLE AGED SUBURBANITE” it’s getting excited over a new trashcan. But here’s the thing. Our old trash can was one of those plastic ones with the swingy tops that always got caught on the trash we piled into it (because we are Uberconsumers, I swear) and I really, REALLY wanted one of those cool stainless steel ones with the little foot pedal but have you seen how much the big ones are?? EIGHTY DOLLARS. FOR A TRASH CAN. And I’m sorry but my trash can should not cost more than the trash it holds, so I refused to buy one.

But then I was wandering through Sam Walton’s Kingdom of Things Made In China and found this awesome Rubbermaid trashcan for $12. IN RED! So it matches my randomly decided red theme in the kitchen, keeps the dog and cats out of all our trash AND has a nifty lid. I am not at all ashamed to say that I bragged about my awesome $12 trashcan for a few days after I found it.
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I got a used bike, and I love it but I have yet to ride it. And this is because I bought it from my friend who just happens to be a good 4 inches taller than me and when she was fixing it up she neglected to lower the seat so when I sit on it I am barely able to reach the ground with my tiptoes. I am planning on riding it down to the bike shop this weekend and get it adjusted, and then I am going to get my new bike basket mounted and then I am going to make Sophie ride in the basket to the dog park. She gets exercise, I get exercise, win win!

Kevin keeps wanting me to buy a bike helmet despite the fact that California law doesn’t require me to. He forgets that I rode a beach cruiser through the streets of LA for two years without a single fall, injury or car incident. Also, I only get hurt when doing mundane things like walking so I don’t really know what he’s worried about.
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Speaking of car incidents, I got rear-ended last week. And not in the good way (BA DUM DUM!) Instead a dude in a Civic slammed into me, then got out and said “That was totally on me, sorry. My chest hurts.”

One of my friends texted me about it later and asked how badly I beat him up. I managed to resist beating the crap out of the non-attention paying idiot but I cannot promise anything when it comes to the mushroom-headed adjuster who is dealing with my claim. That dude may be in for quite a verbal lashing later this week since so far he has managed to A) not call me within the required contact time limit and B) tried to send me to a body shop near my house instead of my job even AFTER I specifically told him I wanted to go to one near my job.

Anyway, my lower back starts hurting if I sit for more than 20 minutes, wine is the only thing that makes it stop hurting, I wake up with headaches and I do not have time for this shit. So I am trying to fix my car and fix myself and ARGH. Pffbbbt.
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I am watching Rachel Getting Married. Will the wine help or hurt my enjoyment of this movie?
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Susan and Shawn came and stayed with us last weekend and celebrated the 4th of July with us. My parental units were even more charming than usual (thank goodness JM got a full night’s sleep the night before) (and also had 9 pounds of bitterness taken out of her last fall), the fireworks were awesome, and we drank a lot of wine and gossiped and it was like a weekend long summer camp.

I lurve my girls.
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Speaking of my girls, Laura had her baby!!! And he is my cute little boo, Kendrick Monkeybutt Squishy Shmoo. It KILLS ME that I am here and not there, and that I have yet to hold him but I am flying out there over Labor Day and then I will smother him with kisses and loving and cook casseroles for his mother.

AND I just found out that Niblet is going to get a sibling next February so it is Auntie M in full effect up in here.

Also, holy cats, as I typed that I got a text message that JM’s son (my stepbrother for all intents and purposes) just welcomed HIS baby boy (his second) an hour ago. This is why I don’t feel bad about not having babies, people. All these awesome, smart people are having babies around me, and I get to do all the fun stuff with them and just bask in my auntiedom.
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This movie is pretty boring so far. I think I need to find some Law & Order
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I have nothing else to say, so here is a gratuitous picture of Sophie on 4th of July. (And yes, I made the collar. Because that’s how I roll.)

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Run. On.

June 3, 2010 at 2:12 pm (Family, Friends, General Gobbledygook)

I’m in a rut. Not a rut so much as well, a crevasse. I’m psychologically stymied. The ennui, I has it.

Who gets ennui in the springtime? Seriously, only me.

I think it is because I am an emotional sponge and there is so much fucking drama (DRAMA MOTHERFUCKERS) around me at any given time these days that I am kind of constantly exhausted. It’s not my drama, thank every deity of possible existence out there. But when one friend almost leaves her husband and another definitely IS leaving her husband and the stories that I tell about my job make my former boss tell me it sounds like an episode of The Office, I become prone to being distracted and skittery and tired and apparently, cannot speak unless it is via incredibly long run-on sentences.

In other news, I told Sheila I needed to take a break from going to her class, because it was starting to get to the point where I hated going. I hated driving down there (it tacked an extra 60-90 minutes of driving onto my day). I hated paying for it, because we are a household of broke ass bitches thanks to some stupid low profile tires I had to buy for my stupid car. I hated the fact that I was missing my husband because I never got home before 7:30 on the one night a week we were both home.  So I quit, and who knows if I will go back. I will call her, and I will stay in touch and I will have to come up with some kind of exercise program on my own that is cheap and that I will actually do because I feel like a slug right now. Luckily, I live in a crazy suburban world in the country and there’s all kinds of activity things going on. There is a dog walking group that goes out and hikes on Sunday mornings, which I think I might try to go do. Of course, the last time I took Sophie out for a hike we saw (from about 10 feet away) A GIGANTIC RATTLESNAKE so now we are having to look into rattlesnake awareness training for her. Because we live in the country, and country dogs need to know how to avoid rattlesnakes. (Of course, Kevin’s plan to avoid rattlesnakes involves just not hiking, but hiking is fun and I like it so rattlesnake awareness training it is!)

I did get to take a quick vacation last weekend over the holiday, and I flew out to Kansas City, MO to visit Laura and help her get her baby’s room ready for his imminent arrival (because yes, she is having a boy, which I told her the first time she had an ultrasound and I saw his giant head; his name is Kendrick and he totally roundhouse kicked me).  And then I packed Laura’s very pregnant self into the car and we drove over to the Kansas side of things and visited (the now boobless but still a hot cougar) Jane, who demonstrated her remarkable ability to find anything I wanted in relation to a liquor store. (Don’t knock it, that is a handy, handy trait to have.) It was a lovely weekend and on my last morning there we went and got coffee at an awesome little coffeeshop in downtown Parkville. It was run by a small gay man named Josh who was originally from (you guessed it) San Diego by way of Los Angeles, so we spent our breakfast chattering with him about North Park and East County and the Princess House crystal plates he inherited from his mother and then used in the shop. (And here I thought only my mother had the insane Princess House collection!)

So I’m taking the summer off from school and hoping to use the extra time to do something productive, like actually finish the Couch to 5K program. Of course, I’m also on the planning committee for the CF Foundation Gala so I’m going to be spending a lot of time asking people for money this summer too but you know I have no problem with that.  I’ll probably take at least one more trip good old Kansas City once my little Monekybutt is born, but other than that I think I’ll just plan on sitting next to the pool and yelling at the neighbor kids all summer. It’s cheap entertainment, which really, is always something I can use more of.

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I think I might be broken

April 12, 2010 at 8:46 pm (Weightastic)
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My therapist called me a few weeks ago, to let me know that she was going to have to leave town indefinitely; her sister is sick so she had to move to go  and take care of her. We agreed that I was probably okay without transferring to a new therapist, since we’d already cut back to once ever 3 weeks or so. My Big Giant Underlying Anxiety seems to be relatively in control (by which I mean I’m not chewing the fuck out of my cuticles and laying awake nights obsessing over all the ways I had probably offended my friends that day), and when I told her I was dieting but not going crazy over it, she cheered for me and told me she thought I was going to be okay.

Fast forward through the next few (incredibly busy but super awesome) weeks. Still doing the Weight Watchers thing, working out more, taking my vitamins, not having any weird crashy symptoms or hot flashes, feeling great all around. Lost a few pounds, gained back a fraction of one of those pounds, then all of a sudden it was April and our anniversary was here and whee, time to escape to our favorite bed and breakfast in Julian, the town where we got married.

Julian is not known for health food and exercise. It is known for comfort food and pie and apple cider and wineries and relaxing. So here is what we did when we went there: we ate fresh, homemade breakfast that involved thick slices of bacon and the best scones ever; after buying half a case of wine, we ate barbecue pork in the sunlight, then strolled down the road to get dessert (pie for Kevin and cinnamon ice cream for me); I drank wine on the patio while reading a magazine; we took naps and snuggled and read really, really old issues of National Geographic; we ate a leisurely dinner involving giant shrimp and an apple galette that was a lovely way to finish the meal.

I dutifully entered it all into my nifty little WW online tool and it told me that OMG I ATE TOO MUCH!!! DANGER ZONE!!! TOO MANY POINTS! And I said “Meh” despite the fact that the scale this morning said that the weekend had knocked my weight up a pound or so. I looked at what I ate and yeah, it was probably more than usual but it was all real food, homemade and crafted by people who care about serving unprocessed, creative, nutritious food. And I refuse to feel guilty about eating food that filled my soul as well as my belly.

And today’s little uptick on the scale could be me retaining water because I’m PMSing. It could be because I didn’t drink enough water this weekend, choosing wine and fresh pressed cider instead. It could have been because I hadn’t pooped yet. Who knows? And honestly, who fucking cares?

Because I don’t. I’ve said it before but I don’t think I really meant it. I know this because today, I do mean it.

(Before I go any farther, let me say one thing: This isn’t me preaching about fat acceptance or getting on my soapbox about HAES (both of which are awesome and have better people than me speaking for it). This is me taking responsibility for accepting my own damn self and being proud of it.)

How much am I going to demand of myself before I say it’s good enough? How thin do I have to be? How small does that number have to be?

Here are the facts: In 2007, I weighed 318 pounds. A day at Disneyland exhausted me, there was no higher size of Lane Bryant jeans that I could buy (at least not in the stores), I eyeballed plastic chairs with trepidation, and I spent most of my time either feeling guilty about what I just ate or planning what foods my next binge was going to involve. Today, as I have for about 6 months,  I vary anywhere from 220-228. (This morning, I weighed 226.8) (I told you, I do not care about that number anymore. And therefore, I do not care who knows it.) Yes, this is 25 pounds higher than my lowest weight after surgery. It’s also 90ish pounds less than I weighed the day I went in for my gastric bypass….the surgery I had almost 3 years ago.

So I’ve kept NINETY POUNDS off for 3 years. When I think of it that way, it’s kind of stunning. It’s stunning and amazing and it makes me more than happy. It makes me proud.

I did not have this surgery to be a special butterfly for the rest of my life. I did it to be normal, to be someone who wasn’t completely obsessed with food and the consumption thereof, to have a body that felt good after working out, to be able to keep up with my incoming niecelets and nephewlings, to have lower blood pressure and cholesterol and higher activity levels, and to be able eat the same food as everyone else without feeling guilty about every bite I eat.

Check, check, check, check, check and also, check.

But I’m an American woman, and I’m a size 16/18 and I’m supposed to hate my broad, jiggly hips and the fact that my arms are somewhat winglike and my belly is floppy even though I’ve never had a baby. I have the boobs of a woman who breastfed twins (seriously, I compared my boobs to a friend’s during a bridesmaid dress changing room situation and she breastfed twins and I did not but we had the EXACT SAME BOOBS) (and thus ends tonight’s TMI section) but I have Really Great Bras so who cares?

In other words, I’m broken. I don’t care! I’m still fat according to everyone and everything and I don’t give a shit because I’m way less fat than I used to be and I run and I look GREAT in dresses (a fantastic side effect of the weight loss) and tonight I walked a mile or two to go pick up dinner just because it sounded like a nice idea and the weather was lovely and the dog needed a good walk.

And yet I’m still going to keep keeping track of what I eat with my nifty WW online tool because I have to admit, the whole keeping track of what I’m eating does keep me aware of what I’m putting in my mouth, and that is not a bad thing. I feel better than I have in a few months, simply because I’ve been taking my vitamins and drinking more water and not having weird hot flashes and sugar crashes from eating too many carbs and in general feeling great. My bloodwork is all still awesome, and I signed up for a trail run next month (3.5 for my 35th birthday!).

So basically, I’m saying fuck it all. Fuck the number on the scale, fuck the BMI number, fuck the fashion dictators, fuck societal norms. I don’t give a shit anymore about any of it.  It’s enough, the weight that I’ve lost. If I lose more, so be it. If I don’t, that’s cool too.

As long as I keep being able to run farther, I’m happy. And if being okay with weighing 226 pounds makes me broken and weird and not normal, that makes me happy too.

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My head is harder than it looks

March 17, 2010 at 2:30 pm (Friends, Weightastic)
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Remember how I went and had weight loss surgery? And then I lost all that weight and was all “WOO, I’m done! I never have to think about it AGAIN!”

Man, I am delusional.

But even the best delusions come to an end for me, so last week I buckled down and admitted that hey, I need to DO SOMETHING to get myself back on track with the whole eating right & keeping fit deal because good intentions were not getting me very far. My good intentions were instead getting my ass a bit bigger, because even if I don’t absorb all of the food I eat, if it’s mostly carbs and processed junky food, that food that’s being absorbed is still going to add back some of the pounds I lost. So even though my doctor says I look good and my bloodwork says I’m super healthy, I decided to go on a diet starting this week.

I know. I thought I would never have to be on one again either.

I remember the day I found out from my surgeon’s office that I didn’t need to go back to any Weight Watchers meetings because my surgery had been approved. I threw away all of the materials, and I felt so very good doing it. I never had to sit around and listen to people talk about how good that fake cheesecake recipe was! Or be told I was going to be disappointed with myself because I gained half a pound! Or listen to them talk about good foods versus bad foods and then watch my own binge eating disorder rear its ugly head on my way home from weighing in.

(You can probably guess where this is going.)

Yesterday I signed up for Weight Watchers Online, and I spent the day remembering one simple fact: Dieting is hard, yo. Thinking about what I’m putting in my mouth and deciding if it’s worth it. Weighing the difference between a scone (yum!) or a spinach wrap (also yum but not scone yum). Paying attention to portion sizes and vitamins and how much water I’m drinking (a lot, by the way). Telling myself that no, I’m not actually hungry, I’m just bored.

I would rather be back in Managerial Accounting, quite frankly, and I dreaded that class.

Before I told her I was doing the WW Online thing, Sheila suggested that I join an in person program that she is running, and I had to tell her I couldn’t. For one thing, it costs too much, but for another (more major) thing, I realize now that I cannot do that group diet thing. I cannot be told “This is good and this is bad” and listen to other people’s tricks and manipulations and weird food issues because they just trigger me to do my own tricks and manipulations. And that kind of setting has never done anything for me other than make me rebellious and bingey and unhappy. And I don’t want to be unhappy.

But this time I have a friend to help me through the “Dude, this SUCKS” part that always happens at the beginning of a diet, and I have a plan to follow without anyone policing me and most of all, I have an actual true desire to turn my behavior around. Dieting is hard, and it sucks, because it makes me be responsible for what goes in my mouth and it makes me think about things that I don’t want to think about and it makes me stop finding weird justifications for everything.

But weirdly enough, for the first time ever in all my years of dieting, I feel good about this. I feel good about eating a salad with tuna and going for a brisk walk at lunch because I know tonight’s dinner will be full of tasty, tasty calories. I feel good about finally taking my vitamins and drinking my water and eating breakfast.

Most of all, I feel good about being able to acknowledge that dieting sucks and is hard and does not feel good but still not considering giving up. Sometimes, uncomfortable can be a good thing. I get that now, in a way I never was able to before.

My therapist will be so proud.

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This is what I sound like in real life, too

March 10, 2010 at 3:39 pm (Friends, General Gobbledygook, Schooling, Weightastic)
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So hey, how about that February that just whizzed by? That was good times, right there. I think I did some stuff and saw some people and maybe did some homework in there somewhere. OH! I definitely went to LA and gave Shawn  the best birthday present EVER (the 1980 Black Barbie, complete with ‘fro, pick and pantsuit!) I also greeted Patrick at the airport with a giant obnoxious sign and ate cupcakes with Trish and Jared. And hung out with my dog and my husband and the little asshole cats.

In other words, I did the whole day to day life thing.

And then March came and Weetacon was finally here and real life went far far away and I cried in a bar about how awesome Wendy Bix is and I ate chicken fried steak at 2:30am (MISTAKE) and I drank the best home brewed beer ever and dropped my Nano in my bathtub and lost my voice and didn’t show my boobs, not even once. And it was magical and sparkly and awesome and then I came home and had to work and ugh.

I have to say, for someone who actually usually enjoys her job and its flexibility (hello, I am writing this entry while scanning business cards), I am easily annoyed by it. Maybe that is why I was told during my review that I tend to be “discourteous when feeling under pressure.” (Apparently that bothers me more than I let on, since I have told that story to oh, 50 people now.)

But I mean come on. There was apparently drama about who was going to answer the door while I was gone (our facility is locked down and people ahve to be buzzed in, whoo whoo TOP SECRET SHIT HERE), because apparently everyone else is JUST TOO BUSY to answer the door. Amazingly enough, they discovered that having to answer the door constantly means that a person gets interrupted all damn day. HELLO, WELCOME TO MY WORLD. Ask me again why the Big Giant Filing Project isn’t done. It’s because I am basically chained to my desk until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, that’s why. And this is why I’m getting an MBA, so I can get unchained from the front desk (By the way, I totally aced Managerial Accounting somehow.)

So anyway, I got to come back and listen to the fall out from that drama and I really just wanted to tell everyone that they were grown ass adults and to stop complaining about it because damn if it’s going to keep me from going on vacations (especially now that we have found out that my coworker is basically the best petsitter ever in the history of the world.) But then I remembered that I really like my coworkers and I really like my hours and I really, REALLY like the fact that my company is actually successful in these uncertain times, so I shut my mouth and ate some chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, have I mentioned that I have an entire chocolate drawer in my fridge? This is because my dear friend David sells chocolate through Dove, which now has this whole home party enterprise. Think Tupperware but for chocolate. And it’s actual good chocolate so I buy some or I host a party and then whammo, chocolate drawer. I’m like the worst WLS patient in the history of the world.

Speaking of worst WLS patient in the world, I’ve had these weird symptoms lately that sent me over to my doctor asking if there was a possibility that I could be starting menopause early. Or maybe it was my thyroid! Or something! So she took a ton of blood from me (because my doctor does not pshaw her patients’ concerns) and tested me up, down, left and right and declared me perfectly normal. (Aside from the hot flashes and dry skin and usual insanity, of course.) So I’m telling my friend this and drop in there that oh, well, I haven’t been taking my vitamins lately (I KNOW) and she basically smacked me with her eyes and sarcastically said “Oh, maybe you should try taking them then? MAYBE?”

So I’ll start taking them again, I promise. Because I really don’t like the hot flashes. And I hear beri beri sucks.

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It Is What It Is

January 20, 2010 at 11:49 am (Friends, Weightastic)
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I had a party to go to this weekend, a fantastic and fabulous party that is given annually by two of my favorite people in the world and this year, they threw us an 80′s Prom.

“Yay!” thought my inner prom queen, “I can finally use that bridesmaid’s dress from Laura’s wedding again!”

A few days before the party, I realized that hey, maybe I should try it on, seeing as I hadn’t worn it for a year and a half and things change. Butts get bigger, workouts get missed, the holidays ahd just happened, etc. So I tried it on and praise be, that size 14 bridesmaid’s dress still fit. Hallelujah, etc. I packed it up and headed out to have a good time.

The dress worked well for the party, especially with the addition of fingerless lace gloves, giant hair, copious amounts of blue eyeshadown and a veritable pile of long, plasticy necklaces. And the party was nothing but a good time, surrounded by fun people and many glasses of champagne and a husband who gambled enough to win me a stuffed Smurf. But somewhere around the 5th hour of wearing the dress (which was described as one of my friends as “very complicated” when he helped zip me into it), the dress started trying to kill me.

The built in, long line bra contraption started poking me in the ribs. It rode up and made me itch. If I pulled it up, the stays jabbed a new bruise into an unmarked part of my rib cage;  if I pulled down, the dress threatened to release my boobs in a small tsunami of unfettered flesh. In other words, the dress and I were having a disagreement, and the dres? Was totally winning.

I started joking about finding Mo’s suitcase and stealing some clothes from her, since I did not have anything in the car to change into. When I made the joke to her, she immediately offered to give me pajama pants and a tank top so I would survive without permanent scarring. As I was changing I told her I had forgotten how stabby the dress was, and that it was even stabbier since I’d put on probably 15  or so pounds (at least) since the last time I wore it.

“Is this a bad thing? Or a good thing?” Mo asked, since she knows about the weight loss surgery I had. “Or a neutral thing?”

I shrugged and said “It is what it is. I’m just glad I don’t have rickets!” And then we went back out and rejoined the party and had a very good night all around.

So yeah, I’ve gained back some of the weight I lost. And no, it’s not my favorite thing in the world to admit. That’s partly because I never hit the goal I wanted to hit in the first place and partly because admitting I’ve gained weight back (beyond my 5 pound “bounce back”, which I totally wrote off) feels like admitting I’m a failure. And that is pretty much stupid, because statistically, I am a weight loss surgery success. I lost 65% of my excess weight and have maintained that for 2 1/2 years. My cholesterol dropped like a stone, my blood pressure followed suit, my blood sugars are actually tending toward the low end, and oh my GOD, I can jog now! For extended periods of time even!

But I will admit that this weight gain has freaked me out. I was on the verge of a total downward spiral last month, until I was shopping and tried on some size 16 straight leg Levi’s (that’s a misses size 16, not a women’s size 16) and they fit perfectly. I’m still 6 sizes smaller than I was at my largest, and I’m still fitting into all the clothes in my closet, and I can still buy things without trying them on because I know they will fit. So I was able to step back and take a breath and tell myself “It is what it is.”

There is a change that needs to be made though, because even though my numbers are good and my fitness is decent and I’m active and working out and wearing the same size as I did 18 months ago, I am not feeling my best. I am not making nutritionally sound choices, I am not taking my vitamins on a regular basis, I am not drinking enough water or getting enough protein or avoiding sugar. And it’s making me feel bloaty and rundown and making my intestinal tract unpredictable and cranky. My brain doesn’t operate as well and I’m not as happy as I could be because my body is not getting what it needs. So while that number on the scale is what it is, it’s time to get honest with myself and do what I need to do to get back on track.

If only there was an easy way to do that. Guess all I can do is keep trying.

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To Do or Not To Do, That Is The Question

January 6, 2010 at 4:18 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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I am notorious for having giant long to-do lists. At work I have these hardbound record books where I keep all of my notes, and every day I write a new to-do list with anywhere from 10 to 25 things listed on there to get done in one day. (I never finish them all.) I have a notebook that lives in my purse where I jot down lists of things I need to get done at home. I send emails with lists of things to do to Kevin so I can make sure that he gets his things done.

So with all my compulsive list making, you’d think I would love the whole resolution schtick. It’s a list! Of things to do! Except I hate it, because I fail at long term projects. I am a procrastinator to the extreme, a person who always waited until the last minute to do schoolwork. (True story: One day at lunch my freshman year in college, some friends tried to get me to go shopping with them. I told them I couldn’t because I needed to write a paper. “When’s it due?” they asked, “It can wait!” But no, it couldn’t because it was due at 3 that afternoon. I got a B+) So you see where telling myself in January that I will do something before December becomes a problem.

I am therfore NOT making resolutions this year. Instead, I’ve decided to make small, monthly to-do lists. And by small I mean 3-5 things. I do have an overall goal guiding all of this (Live well, be happpy, stay healthy), but the two main areas I want to improve are my diet/fitness situations and my financial situation. So every month, there will be 1 diet/fitness to-do, 1 financial to-do and 1-3 general life to-dos.

January To-Dos 2010:

  1. Diet/Fitness: Stop drinking soda. I somehow slipped back into drinking Diet Coke like it was water and that needs to stop tout suite.
  2. Financial: Create year-long budget spreadsheet. I used to do this every December to keep track of our paychecks and plan out what bills will be paid when. I stopped and now things are A MESS.
  3. General Life: Walk Sophie at least 3x/week. Even though she’s little and really tends to spend most of her time sleeping, she needs to get out more. She’s crazy when she doesn’t get enough exercise, and now that Laura and her pugs are gone she’s not getting her weekly 12-hour “run around like a crazy thing” sessions.
  4. General Life: Cook at home 3x/week and eat out at lunch no more than 1x/week. Gotta get our nutrition back on track at home; we can survive on cookies anymore. Plus, eating out is expensive.

I’ve also made a commitment to Sheila (she of the insane yet awesome workouts) that I will not miss more than 2 classes a month until at least August. And I made a commitment to Kevin to keep Saturdays open so that he and I can spend them together as often as possible.

So we’ll see just how much of it gets done. But I have high hopes because look how short that list is!

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Over and Out

January 3, 2010 at 10:59 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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I took down all my Christmas decorations today. The sparkly lights and fake greenery and ornaments with their shmoopy stories are all boxed up and waiting to go back into storage for another year. I was sad to put it away, and not just because this means my vacation is really and truly over now.

I was sad because this holiday season was one of the best ones we’ve had in awhile. I vowed to keep it low stress and low cost. I committed to nothing outside of work obligations and our own open house/holiday party. I slashed our list of people we were buying presents for and didn’t sign up for card exchanges. I gave myself permission to cut corners and go to bed early once a week, and it all worked out beautifully.

I spent time with dear friends, lingering over dinner and playing silly games. I baked roughly 5 million cookies, meditating in my kitchen as butter and sugar and flour became little gifts for everyone I knew. I threw a stellar holiday party for my company, and was reminded again how lucky I am to be working with these people at this company in this industry. We invited our friends and family and coworkers into our home to watch football and eat cookies and tell Sophie how cute she is. I made my first turkey, and it turned out fabulous.

So it was indeed a happy holiday season for me, for us. I paused and looked around and realized that this right here, this is the life I have been trying to get to all these years.

A priceless gift, indeed.

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